Framing Charles

[rjpalmer]

So you think that since the neck was severed late in the process, the throat cannot have been cut earlier...?

Hereīs what Phillips said:

THE CORONER. - Is there anything to show where the loss of blood occurred?
PHILLIPS. - Not in the remains; but the supposition that presents itself to my mind is that there was a former incision of the neck, which had disappeared with the subsequent separation of the head.

This is a complex question, and more study is needed.

I'm not denying what Phillip's said. I'm questioning how we square his theory of death from throat slashing when the skin around the neck was found 'red and moist' some days later, in stark contrast to the black and dry skin around the hips.

The Ripper victims often had their necks cut clear down to the spinal column; you and Phillips seem to believe this was done in the Pinchin case, yet the murderer inexplicably didn't finish cutting off the head completely for another 2-5 days, even though he quickly removed the legs. And in doing so, he opted to make a brand new, clean and 'moist' incision, further down? Or equally strange, he cut the head off entirely and immediately (something the Ripper couldn't do), but the skin around the incision somehow stayed moist for days?

Those are very strange scenarios.

We know from Dr. Hebbert that the victim bled out, but I read a forensic article by pathologists in the UK, describing several case of people bleeding out from head wounds. Such an injury is rare, but a person can also bleed out from a cut to the femoral artery in the upper thigh. Since both the head and the legs were missing, we have no way of knowing that this wasn't the case with the Pinchin Street victim, but either possibility would align with the apparent 'fresh' cut to the neck, not made until some days after death.

Unless I can find an answer to these questions, I have to reject Phillip's suggestion.

[MrBarnett]

Come, come, Fish. Play fair.

The women used the dark courts and alleys to conclude their transactions--not to solicit. This is what we have been told by Inspector Moore, Abberline, and others. And you're the one that suggested Lechmere crept out of his house 45 minutes early; now you're suggesting he met a prostitute on his path to work, despite the fact that they solicited elsewhere, and you now have a missing 45 minutes to explain.

I'm not pulling these probabilities out of my hat. At the Nichols inquest, the workmen were asked by Baxter if they had seen any women in the back streets. One horse slaughter answered, "I don't like them." This infuriated Baxter who responded, "I didn't ask whether you liked them, I asked if you had seen them!" The man's answer: no. He had not seen any women in the back streets. This is just a snapshot in time, but Simon Wood also posted an account of a stakeout of these same backstreets by a journalist, who found them quiet and deserted at night.

By stark contrast, the same workman question by Baxter referred to women commonly seen soliciting on the Whitechapel Road.

Thus, I conclude that the most probable answer is that Nichols was either picked up on Whitechapel Road by a client, or was follow from same. Your scenario has Lechmere meeting Nichols by sheer accident near the exact time he would have been normally commuting. Theoretically, he could be the murderer, of course, but, if so, he has no case to answer, because he had a perfectly plausible reason for having been there at that moment, and he sought assistance from the first person who passed by.

Sorry, but that's how I see it.

Henry Tomkins was asked whether women ever visited the knackers yard and he fudged the answer by saying ‘I don’t like them’. The obvious answer, if they hadn’t, would’ve been an emphatic ‘NO!’ He also claimed that he and his mate had just stood about in the street during their break. Of course they did. They wouldn’t have gone to the pub or consorted with ladies of the night - they ‘didn’t like’ that kind of thing. ;-) His dad had been found at the yard in an alcoholic coma a few months previously. No doubt he signed the pledge at that point. Perhaps he attended the same church as Lechmere.

HB’s yard was one of the few places where there was activity at 3.00am. It was warm, there was probably tea and maybe something stronger on offer. Do you imagine that a homeless woman had never popped her head inside the gates?

I may be misremembering this, but weren’t you offering the Rubenhold explanation for Polly’s presence in Buck’s Row a while back?

[MrBarnett]

The question wasn't whether Lechmere was 'too tired to kill,' the question was whether the 1-1:45 murders on a Saturday night 'fit nicely' with Lechmere's supposed schedule.

I feel somewhat vindicated by Dusty's statement about the long work hours of Pickford's employees. As I wrote in an earlier post, our modern-day anecdotes about work habits aren't relevant when discussing an age before unions, humane labor laws, refrigeration, etc. Dickins didn't refer to one of his miserable champions of the status quo as "Mr. Gradgind" for nothing. Working hours could be brutal, and if Lechmere is coming off a 80-100 workweek, the idea that he is still up boozing at 1.00 a.m. is quite rightly questioned.

And how do we know Lechmere was even a drinker? If we are going speculate, then I speculate he became a deeply religious man after running over the child in the 1870s and never touched a drop. He read the Pilgrim's Progress until 8 pm and then called it a night.

The sad reality is that we don't know enough about him to say what he was "likely" to have done.

The question was actually whether Lechmere had been awake for 23 consecutive hours. What was being suggested was that it was highly improbable that CAL would have been anywhere but tucked up in bed at midnight on a Saturday. Of course he needn’t have been, he could’ve gone home and had a nap before going out to St Georges for a few beers. That would fit nicely.


Dusty’s statement appears to use the upper limit of a range quoted in a press report. The report covered a meeting attended by Pickfords drivers until very late on a Saturday night (the meeting got underway about 11pm.) How does that vindicate you? Do you find it plausible that numerous carmen would have the energy to attend a union meeting until the early hours, but a serial killer carman wouldn’t be able to spend a few hours in St George’s?

From memory, you threw in stuff about heavy drinking colleagues you’d worked with. So we can presumably ignore that as being anachronistic.

[rjpalmer]

The facts are that Whitechapel Road was a place where prostitutes paraded. But it was not the only place where they did so. Furthermore, the sex on offer was not consumed in Whitechapel Road; instead the prostitutes and their punters would commonly use small, dark side streets and alleys, like for example Bucks Row. And once they were done, the prostitutes were not teleported back to Whitechapel Road in a split second. They instead found themselves in these small streets and alleys. What if a working man came along at such a stage, offering them a chance to earn a little more money?

Come, come, Fish. Play fair.

The women used the dark courts and alleys to conclude their transactions--not to solicit. This is what we have been told by Inspector Moore, Abberline, and others. And you're the one that suggested Lechmere crept out of his house 45 minutes early; now you're suggesting he met a prostitute on his path to work, despite the fact that they solicited elsewhere, and you now have a missing 45 minutes to explain.

I'm not pulling these probabilities out of my hat. At the Nichols inquest, the workmen were asked by Baxter if they had seen any women in the back streets. One horse slaughter answered, "I don't like them." This infuriated Baxter who responded, "I didn't ask whether you liked them, I asked if you had seen them!" The man's answer: no. He had not seen any women in the back streets. This is just a snapshot in time, but Simon Wood also posted an account of a stakeout of these same backstreets by a journalist, who found them quiet and deserted at night.

By stark contrast, the same workman question by Baxter referred to women commonly seen soliciting on the Whitechapel Road.

Thus, I conclude that the most probable answer is that Nichols was either picked up on Whitechapel Road by a client, or was follow from same. Your scenario has Lechmere meeting Nichols by sheer accident near the exact time he would have been normally commuting. Theoretically, he could be the murderer, of course, but, if so, he has no case to answer, because he had a perfectly plausible reason for having been there at that moment, and he sought assistance from the first person who passed by.

Sorry, but that's how I see it.

[Fisherman]

The question wasn't whether Lechmere was 'too tired to kill,' the question was whether the 1-1:45 murders on a Saturday night 'fit nicely' with Lechmere's supposed schedule.

What I commented on was Dustys post. And Dusty spoke of how the long shifts would make Lechmere tired.

I feel somewhat vindicated by Dusty's statement about the long work hours of Pickford's employees. As I wrote in an earlier post, our modern-day anecdotes about work habits aren't relevant when discussing an age before unions, humane labor laws, refrigeration, etc. Dickins didn't refer to one of his miserable champions of the status quo as "Mr. Gradgind" for nothing. Working hours could be brutal, and if Lechmere is coming off a 80-100 workweek, the idea that he is still up boozing at 1.00 a.m. is quite rightly questioned.

... and then you go ahead and do the same. Priceless!! The idea that Lechmere would be too knackered to have a beer on a Saturday night is useless, to put it mildly. We do not know how long he worked on Saturdays generally speaking, and much less how long he worked on the specific Saturday at hand. Is this really what you can come up with to question how he could have been the killer of Stride and Eddowes? He couldn’ t because he was too tired?
The issue is sociologically interesting, but this is not sociology.

And how do we know Lechmere was even a drinker? If we are going speculate, then I speculate he became a deeply religious man after running over the child in the 1870s and never touched a drop. He read the Pilgrim's Progress until 8 pm and then called it a night.

Oh dear. Maybe he had a thing about never walking in a westerly direction...?

The sad reality is that we don't know enough about him to say what he was "likely" to have done.

If he decided to go out and have a prune juice (we should not brandish him a drinker) in the company of friends, then it IS likely that these friends lived in St Georges. This is something that is intimately connected to how Lechmere had lived there for ages before he moved to Doveton Street in mid June, some 15 weeks before.

...and no, it is not rocket science this time either.

[rjpalmer]

Can we please drop the argument that he may have been to[o] tired to kill? I find it silly in the extreme.

The question wasn't whether Lechmere was 'too tired to kill,' the question was whether the 1-1:45 murders on a Saturday night 'fit nicely' with Lechmere's supposed schedule.

I feel somewhat vindicated by Dusty's statement about the long work hours of Pickford's employees. As I wrote in an earlier post, our modern-day anecdotes about work habits aren't relevant when discussing an age before unions, humane labor laws, refrigeration, etc. Dickins didn't refer to one of his miserable champions of the status quo as "Mr. Gradgind" for nothing. Working hours could be brutal, and if Lechmere is coming off a 80-100 workweek, the idea that he is still up boozing at 1.00 a.m. is quite rightly questioned.

And how do we know Lechmere was even a drinker? If we are going speculate, then I speculate he became a deeply religious man after running over the child in the 1870s and never touched a drop. He read the Pilgrim's Progress until 8 pm and then called it a night.

The sad reality is that we don't know enough about him to say what he was "likely" to have done.

[MrBarnett]

If a man is known far and wide by one name, but gives the police and the coroner another name by which he is less known, would that have been considered OK?

I think not.

The implication of his kids’ name at school should be borne in mind, as should the name he used to advertised the coffee rooms he ran - Lechmere.

Was he ever known as Cross in and around James Street? Perhaps not. If not, then by not mentioning the name Lechmere he was effectively concealing his identity.

[MrBarnett]

>>It was a double anomaly. He deviated from his normal practice when dealing with the authorities. <<

Since bigamy was a crime punishable by imprisonment, it' sharply surprising he stuck with name Cross when dealing with police as opposed to Lechmere when dealing with red tape. Plus, of course, the fact that he was probably known as Cross at Pickfords and Pickfords was relevant in both "court" cases.


>>And he deviated from the norm of witnesses revealing both names. <<

Since the list of dual names we know about were generally derived from the fact that the dual names were relevant to the case at hand it is hardly surprising that both the names would be mentioned.

To date nobody has supplied statistics to the number of people that didn't use their "paper" name when swearing in, it cannot be described as an anomaly. We don't know what "normal" was.

The name Cross on its own presented no risk. Only in conjunction with the unusual name of Lechmere and reference to a stepfather might it have alerted those who knew John Lechmere was still alive to the bigamy.

I have seen numerous examples of witnesses divulging two names because they seemed to think it was the correct thing to do. There was even a case where a woman was convicted of perjury by making a number of misleading statements in court. The one the judge focused on was that she presented herself under the surname of the man she lived with (but wasn’t married to) rather than her ‘real’ name. The concept of a ‘real/proper/legal’ name was firmly fixed in the Victorian psyche - I’d say it is today - whatever the technical legal position was/is.

[MrBarnett]

A few things worth noting after reading what the posts here.

In 1891 Pickfords carmen fought for better working conditions. They claimed they had to work 18 hour shifts with no overtime and no holiday pay. So, yes, it is reasonable to assume Cross would be tired on his day off if he had one that night.

I've been told, but, haven't conformed it yet, that Pickfords didn't allow driver to do regular routes because of the possibility of organised stealing.

If he drank in the pubs around Berner St. with mates, they would know he moved to Doveton St and they would know of a Cross connection, so there would be a high chance people would comment on the fact that he was present at another murder site.

That’s interesting, Dusty. I can find reports of a meeting where men from the London Parcels Delivery Company, Carter Patterson and Pickfords considered the possibility of strike action if their various demands weren’t met. One of those demands was a reduction of working hours from 14-18 hours per day to 12. The meeting took place on a Saturday night and broke up at ‘a very late hour’.

Your second point is also interesting. When you have it confirmed, it’ll be something to consider.

The final point is a good one. Of course, the fact that he had had a stepfather named Cross twenty years previously might not have been known by his ex-neighbours in St Georges. When his kids were registered at school in 1888 the name Lechmere was used. Their teachers and schoolfriends would presumably have known them by that name. That’s quite significant, I feel. Forget censuses and electoral registers - no one would read those. The name your children’s school friends know them by will be the name the school friends’ parents, siblings etc know them by.

[Fisherman]

>>It was a double anomaly. He deviated from his normal practice when dealing with the authorities. <<

Since bigamy was a crime punishable by imprisonment, it' sharply surprising he stuck with name Cross when dealing with police as opposed to Lechmere when dealing with red tape. Plus, of course, the fact that he was probably known as Cross at Pickfords and Pickfords was relevant in both "court" cases.

That is your take on things. Mine is another. None of us can prove our takes, but we DO have an anomaly involved when he used "Cross" in combination with violent death.


>>And he deviated from the norm of witnesses revealing both names. <<

Since the list of dual names we know about were generally derived from the fact that the dual names were relevant to the case at hand it is hardly surprising that both the names would be mentioned.

To date nobody has supplied statistics to the number of people that didn't use their "paper" name when swearing in, it cannot be described as an anomaly. We don't know what "normal" was.

It is an anomaly because we know that he otherwise used "Lechmere" in authority contacts. An anomaly is easiest described as an exception to a rule. To speculate about how innocent people gave names by which they were not registered at inquests has to remain speculation only. My guess is that when we have it on record that these things occurred, it will be in combination with when various criminals were revealed for having tried to keep their true identities from the police. I fail to see that there will be articles where an innocent Mr X calling himself Mr Y has been exposed for this kind of thing.

[Fisherman]

A few things worth noting after reading what the posts here.

In 1891 Pickfords carmen fought for better working conditions. They claimed they had to work 18 hour shifts with no overtime and no holiday pay. So, yes, it is reasonable to assume Cross would be tired on his day off if he had one that night.

I've been told, but, haven't conformed it yet, that Pickfords didn't allow driver to do regular routes because of the possibility of organised stealing.

If he drank in the pubs around Berner St. with mates, they would know he moved to Doveton St and they would know of a Cross connection, so there would be a high chance people would comment on the fact that he was present at another murder site.

Can we please drop the argument that he may have been to tired to kill? I find it silly in the extreme.

If he drank with mates in St Georges on a regular basis and had done so on the weekends since he moved to Doveton Street, how many of those mates would couple it to him being a likely killer?

And just how do we know that these mates were aware about the name Cross?

[Fisherman]

I think this opinion is on very unsteady ground, Gary.

Here’s what Donald Swanson wrote: “the dismemberment [ie., of the legs] had taken place at an earlier period than the head for the raw flesh had from continued exposure dried on the surface which presented a blackened appearance in consequence.”

We see confirmation for this in the notes of Dr. Hebbert: "the cut surfaces at the hips were black and dry, but the surface at the neck moist and red."

In other words, the legs were removed some days before the head was removed. By all appearances, the woman was murdered or even killed accidently (one suggestion was blows to the head) and her legs were then removed, probably to aid concealment. It wasn’t until days later, and only shortly before the body was dumped, that the head was removed…almost certainly to thwart any attempt at identification, as we see in domestic 'torso' cases.

How do you square this with street throat slashing cases akin to the 'Ripper'?

So you think that since the neck was severed late in the process, the throat cannot have been cut earlier...?

Hereīs what Phillips said:

THE CORONER. - Is there anything to show where the loss of blood occurred?
PHILLIPS. - Not in the remains; but the supposition that presents itself to my mind is that there was a former incision of the neck, which had disappeared with the subsequent separation of the head.

The 1873 torso victim was bled out completely. There was not a drop of blood in her vessels, so she had been hung up and bled off by the killer. This tells us that he wanted to clear the blood away before he cut. There were signs of muscle contraction showing that the ensuing dismemberment followed very quickly.

Conclusion: He wants to cut up. But he does not want it to be a messy business.

The Ripper victims had their throts slashed. That is in line with the quickest possible bleeding off.

The Pinchin Street woman was likely killed by means of having her throat cut. She was then left dead with that cut, up until it was time to despatch her. At that stage, the killer removed the head, possibly - but it is not a given - in order to make an ID harder. It is in line with all the other torso victims, save the Tottenham torso.

[Fisherman]

I think the question I'd ask in response to Michael Richards's comment is whether you or anyone else accepts Professor Larsson's claim that, based on the geographical locations of the crimes, it is 5,000,000 to 1 that the killer is anyone other than Charles Lechmere?




I think this has been flogged enough that it requires no further comment, but the thinking here is that Lechmere crept out of his house 45 minutes early in order to find a prostitute, and, succeeding--probably in the Whitechapel Road, as this was their usual plod--he brought her back to his own route to work, and then was unfortunate enough to be caught murdering her at the exact moment he would have been there anyway, had he simply been walking to work at his usual time.

A remarkable example of a 'reverse alibi.'

The thing is, though, that we donīt know where he found his victims. There is no certainty at all that he picked Nichols up in Whitechapel Road. That is just a suggestion you are making so as to try and make it sound weird that she was later found dead along Lechmereīs path.

The facts are that Whitechapel Road was a place where prostitutes paraded. But it was not the only place where they did so. Furthermore, the sex on offer was not consumed in Whitechapel Road; instead the prostitutes and their punters would commonly use small, dark side streets and alleys, like for example Bucks Row. And once they were done, the prostitutes were not teleported back to Whitechapel Road in a split second. They instead found themselves in these small streets and alleys. What if a working man came along at such a stage, offering them a chance to earn a little more money?

You warned me in your last post not to lump things together. But lumping the prostitution business together as if all the deals were done in Whitechapel Road is no problem for you?

Flexibility. Gotta love it.

[Fisherman]

For the sake of brevity, let me just say that I reject the Pinchin Street case as being part of the 'Ripper' series for the same reasons that Commissioner James Monro outlined in his 7 page report to the Home Office, dated September 11, 1889. I'm confident you have read it.

The only thing I would add to Monro's arguments is that the victim's head being removed shortly before the body was dumped is highly suggestive of a domestic killing, where knowing the victim's identity will lead to the murderer. It is a common feature of such cases.

The victim's hands were well manicured and showed no sign of physical labor; in fact, it was suggested she was spent a lot of time writing with a pen--so we aren't likely to be looking at a drunken street woman from Spitalfields, despite that fact that some here wish to label her a prostitute.

I notice in your above statement that many of the features you attribute to the alleged torso 'series' do not actually apply to the Pinchin Street case. I realize you are using 'shorthand,' but it is rather deceptive to lump the various torso cases together as one 'series,' and then pick and choose various attributes from individual case to make a cumulative argument that they conform to the Ripper's alleged motivations. No organs were removed from the Pinchin Street victim; no sexual mutilations occurred (except accidently from the incision); nor was her throat cut (according to medical opinion); nor--do I believe--were any rings missing. (A newspaper report makes this claim, but Hebbert specifically states the victim had not worn a wedding band).

The main pitfall of the pseudo-science of 'signature,' is that human behavior is complex, and behaviors that appear similar--or even identical--can, in fact, spring from entirely different motivations. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, we are experts at seeing subtle patterns. We are so good, in fact, that we see patterns even where they do not exist.

Welcome to the wonderful world of crime detection.

Thank you, R J. Although I have been in that world for some four decades by now.

You are opposed to "lumping cases together", but I think that this has already been taken care of by Dr Hebbert, who was very certain that the four 1887-89 torsos were all cut up by the same man. And he would have been better suited to make that call than you, or for that matter I am. The cutting used was in every respect the exact same, was what Hebbert said, and so we may safely rely on how this particular matter is once and for all settled. When we MUST lump together and have clear evidence that we should do so, we lump together. Or, if we want to use another, less tainted term, we accept that we need to treat the four victims as a group with a common killer.

After this, we have the many similarities that I listed i between the two series. You now want to ascribe them to how the two killers you imagine would have done the same extremely rare things - but for differing reasons!

The torso killer decided that he wanted to cut away Jacksonīs abdomional wall because X.

And the Ripper decided he wanted to cut away the abdominal walls from Kelly and Chapman because Y.

If we were speaking of less rare inclusions, the idea would work better. But once we have extremely rare inclusions, the crime solving manual urges us to take note of what we see instead of trying to explain it away.

The same goes for cutting from ribs to pubes.

The same goes for taking out uteri.

The same goes for taking out hearts.

Not to note these things and not to accept that we have a common killer would demand that we had insurmountable obstcles in the shape of dissimilarities to deal with. But we donīt. All there is, is the matter of dismemberment, and that is no problem at all. There is even reason to think that the torso victims were cut up in a bolthole that could in some way be linked to the killer, and that would mean that we have a situation where the killer HAD TO dispose of the bodies. And if that was not workable with whole bodies, he had to cut them up. Problem solved.

That was never a requirement for the Ripper.

So you loose out on the argument. There was in all probability just the one killer and that is proven by the many odd similarities inbetween the series. End of, regardless of what Monro thought. It is not as if these men were well versed in serial killings. On the contrary, they had no experience or understanding of the underlying mechanisms at all.

Oh, and it is not the state of the nails of a victim that governs if she belongs to a limited tally of victims or not - it is the damage done. Sutcliffe killed prostitutes, right? And he killed non-prostitutes.

And guess how we know that? Why do we not reason that Barbara Leach cannot possiby have been a victim of his, since she was a student with no connection whatsoever to prostitution?
Any ideas?
Could it perhaps be because she was whacked over the head with a hammer and subsequently stabbed with a screwdriver?

Once again, the damage done and the similarities involved are the giveaway. The blemish-free reeputation is not. And this applies here although anyone could have owned a hammer and a screwdriver. Ergo, the damage done to Leach involved nothing at all as rare and odd as the taking away of the abdominal wall, the cutting from ribs to pubes and the removal of inner organs.

Sutcliffe is quite a rare offender as such. But in comnparison with the Ripper/Torso killer, he is eons away in terms of rarity. Eons!!

The sooner we admit how this affects our case, the better. Not that I think that it will ever happen for some...

[drstrange169]

>>It was a double anomaly. He deviated from his normal practice when dealing with the authorities. <<

Since bigamy was a crime punishable by imprisonment, it' sharply surprising he stuck with name Cross when dealing with police as opposed to Lechmere when dealing with red tape. Plus, of course, the fact that he was probably known as Cross at Pickfords and Pickfords was relevant in both "court" cases.


>>And he deviated from the norm of witnesses revealing both names. <<

Since the list of dual names we know about were generally derived from the fact that the dual names were relevant to the case at hand it is hardly surprising that both the names would be mentioned.

To date nobody has supplied statistics to the number of people that didn't use their "paper" name when swearing in, it cannot be described as an anomaly. We don't know what "normal" was.